Conveyor belts are held together by individual fasteners driven into the belt ends to splice the belt together. The industry has strived to increase the efficiency and safety of installing belt fasteners by using a number of systems and devices. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,487,217 discloses an air-powered tool that drives a single fastener by disposing fasteners in a collated strip to make the system quick and easy to use in belt shops. The system was designed to be used with a commercial nail gun or other such device so that the user could implement the system with existing tools. The magazine of a traditional nail gun is removed and replaced with multi-prong belt clips to save time.
Other advances, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,493,682, involve a system that allows the use of various different hammers to drive the fastener into the belt. For example, the system could use an electric hammer normally used to break concrete. The hammer of this system is used to drive a single fastener at a time because the size of the piston is not large enough to effectively drive a multiple pin driver.
In conventional fastener driver systems, the force distributed from a hammer or piston must be distributed effectively throughout the pins or driver in order to sufficiently fasten rivets or other fasteners to the belt. Conventional fastener driver systems also strive to create a simple, portable or removable fastener driver that can be easily held by a user and aligned with corresponding fastener locations on a belt.